Have you ever had to burn your ships?
The movie Unsung Heroes has a scene when the Mother is playing on the pirate’s ship in the playground with her 6.5 children. They are pretending to be pirates who discover a new land. The pretend pirates land their ships and go seeking the treasures of new lands.
Most of them are hopeful of a great new adventure where they will find great treasures. Still; they know they will have to be very brave to carry out this new mission. There will be battles full of great struggles. They might get lost along the way. Food will be scarce. Rest will not exist. The work will be crushing. There are no promises that the treasure will be worth the hunt. However; they will never know unless they complete this quest.
For a few moments the group of pretenders ponder whether they should take the risk of getting back on their ships and going back to more familiar seas. Life as a pirate out on the sea had come easy. It was the most familiar. They knew and understood their circumstances there. The new land was uncharted and the way was completely unknown.
Then one brave pirate (the Mother among the children) asks the other pretend pirates if they remembered the importance of bringing their torches.
“The torch is very, very important!” she proclaims.
The most inquisitive kid looks at her out of the corner of his eyes and asks that age old question – “Why?”
“Because the torch burns the past.”
“You have to throw your torch of hot burning fire upon the ships we rode into this land upon. Let them burn away behinds us. Our destiny is in moving forward. The only way we will stay brave enough to persevere until we find the hidden treasures of this new place is to have no way to return.”
With that statement she hoisted an imaginary torch and flung it forcefully toward the playground’s pirate ship while screaming out “Burn the ships!”
Silence prevailed as each child hesitated to consider the possibilities.
One-by-one they then followed their mother’s lead. Every one moved very triumphantly ahead by hurling their own imaginary torch of fire toward the ship that was the only way they would ever be able to leave the unchartered ground where they now stood.
Afterward , when the playing was over and they were headed back to real life in a completely strange and new place, each child knew deep within their hearts that they would never return to their previous and beloved home in Australia. Through all the pretending they finally began to face the healing of their own reality. Now they would find the hidden treasures of America because it was the only choice they had left. They would do it in unison as a family, together.
Nothing could stop them now.
The Mother was teaching her children history, but she was doing much, much more. She was giving them hope and encouragement to keep living an amazing life right where they were, no matter what happened or what struggles they met along the way. She believed this was possible if they pulled together as a family.
They had needed to make that huge decision to leave the old life behind and to move on to the new life that God had given to them. Moving on was the only way to fulfill their God-given destiny.
They had truly begun a great adventure!
This is exactly what happened with Naomi’s daughter-in-law named Ruth.
Naomi had heard the news from home; that there was now food in the land. Her deceased husband and sons still owned claims to property in that homeland. Naomi knew that family there could help her to reclaim it. She had decided to go back and face her past. Her heart and her living would come to reveal the great mistake of moving away from her people. Mara would be the one returning; not Naomi. Yet; she did not want her daughter-in-laws to have to leave their homelands in order to go back with her.
Naomi offered for them to make the choice of returning to their homes in Moab or moving back to Bethlehem with her. If they chose to stay, they would be among their own people again, living their old customs again. Most likely would have a chance to marry someone of their own culture before they were too old to bare children. It seemed the logical thing for them to do.
Orpha loved Naomi. She would be sad to leave her, but her final decision was to return to the life that she once knew and to live the way she had grown up to live in Moab.
That was the last word we heard from Orpha in the scriptures, but legend has it that she did remarry and her son grew up to be the Philistine giant whom David slew with a pebble from his sling-shot. That became the destiny of Orpha. It was of her own chosing.
Naomi did not hold this decision against Orpha. She encouraged Ruth to do the same thing.
Ruth, however, had not signed on for a temporary commitment. She had a deep love for Naomi. This love stemmed straight from the fact that Ruth had come to believe in and to completely trust the Great God of Naomi.
Ruth had set her sails for a new land. There was no turning back for Ruth. She had taken the pledge and burned her ships!
Within her heart, Ruth realized there would be struggles. The journey would be hard. Her work would not be easy. There would be times with little food. Rest would not come easy. Ruth set her face in determination though. She was not going to leave the mother-in-law whom she loved. Nor was she going to quit trusting in the REAL God she had come to know.
This was the pledge that she gave to Naomi so very long ago. It is a pledge that was so sweet and so great that for ages people have chosen to use it again and again in wedding vows. Ruth’s famous words have often been repeated through the pages of history during times of great changes which called for huge commitments.
Ruth’s words to Naomi were:
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
When Naomi saw Ruth’s determination she stopped urging her to turn back. Together they began to move forward into an unknown pathway for Ruth.
Ruth had burned her ships.
The way provided no turning back now, or ever.
There is a time in all of our lives when we must decide to burn our ships. We must let go and forget the past and move on into the future. It is never an easy decision. This only happens with God’s help.
The musical group called For King And Country was formed from the younger brothers of the cast portrayed in Unsung Heroes. The movie was a beautiful true story in which these two young boys who grew up to form a part of this band co-wrote a song to describe their childhood teachings. Below is their song, which I have always thought was God breathed and inspired.
Such things as these deep and mysterious truths of faith gave Ruth the courage to move on into the unknown. We all must walk through whatever it is going to take to give us the courage and bravery to move on through this world we no longer feel a part of. We all have ships to burn behind us.
Only God can show us how to go about this.
He will if we let him.
Just as He showed Ruth what to do, God also showed some brave children from Australia how to make it in America. The song that came from all of these many stories is one of many other stories as well. We all have become the beneficiaries of both the actions of the bravery of others in these ancient and modern stories. The blessing of this song and all the stories which inspired it have become a treasure to many.